What kinds of investors should I look for?

Description

Ben Narasin, Partner at Canvas Ventures explains what kind of investors you would like to raise money from.

Video transcript

What kinds of investors should I look for?

You know it’s a common saying that advice is worth more than money. My addendum to that would be advice worth more than money as long as you get the money. So the first type investor you want is the one that’s willing to fund you. Given the option, you should always spend as much time as you can picking right investor. The best possible investor for you. I’d argue that’s made up of a couple different things.

One, you generally want an investor with different experiences than you have because you already have a set of experience. If you can get that from somebody again you might as well get a tape recorder in the mirror. I mean, you know what you know. So who has been there before in a way that you haven’t been, who has experience that you don’t have, who overlaps with you but isn’t redundant with you.

I was an entrepreneur for 25 years, what I wanted out of my investors was supportive, smart, focused, hard-working people who are willing to challenge me and make me better. I didn’t want them to tell me what to do, I wanted them to help me think better. And that includes challenging me when they have an experience that differs from the version of life I want to pursue. Ultimately, the entrepreneur is running that company, they are the captain of that ship. At best an investor is a guest navigator. If an investor can help you dodge rocks in the water because they’ve seen them before. Look, I was an entrepreneur for 25 years, I personally prefer, for the most part, ex-entrepreneurs and ex-operators as investors. I’ve seen some world-class investors that were not ex-entrepreneurs or ex-operators and I just found that to be a lot rarer. One last point, the way you figure all that out, is to spend as much time with investors as you can, just like they want to spend time with you, and talk to as many people as they worked with as possible, whether they have referred you to them or not.